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World Gone Cyber MAD

Many cyber experts say the United States is woefully ill prepared for a sophisticated cyber attack and that each passing day brings it one step closer to a potential virtual Armageddon. While the problems hindering the development of an effective and comprehensive cyber deterrence policy are clear (threat measurement, attribution, information-sharing, legal codex development, and poor infrastructure, to name several), this article focuses on one aspect of the debate that heretofore has been relatively ignored: that the futility of governmental innovation in terms of defensive efficacy is a relatively constant and shared weakness across all modern great powers, whether the United States, China, Russia, or others. In other words, every state that is concerned about the cyber realm from a global security perspective is equally deficient and vulnerable to offensive attack; therefore, defensive cyber systems are likely to remain relatively impotent across the board.